Re: Comet impact in the Eastern United States - Feasibility of Evacuation

In article 
<606fddac-d790-45bb-aed8-76aa6aae7404@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Matt Browne SFW <matt.h.browne@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
> living there? Can FEMA prepare for this and actually organize an
> evacuation if it becomes necessary? (on a much smaller scale this
> didn't go so well before Katrina hit New Orleans). What would be the
> general prerequisites?
> 
> The assumptions are the following: Four weeks before the impact, it's
> clear the comet will hit the Eastern United States. Every day the
> comet's trajectory can be calculated more precisely. Two weeks before
> it hits, the impact site is narrowed down to Pennsylvania; then a week
> later it's clear the comet will hit the greater Pittsburgh area. The
> comet is big and fast enough to affect the entire Eastern United
> States area (almost 1 km in size, traveling at 40 km/s). This scenario
> is depicted in the movie "Impact Earth" (available on DVD). Here's a
> description:
> 
> There is only one natural disaster that has the potential to destroy
> all life on Earth: a direct hit by a comet. This spectacular docu-
> drama envisages the consequences of such an impact. Based on
> contributions from NASA, the US military and leading scientists,
> Impact Earth pieces together fact and fiction to show how humans would
> cope with a catastrophic interplanetary event. The film tells the
> story of two scientists who discover that a comet is on a collision
> course with Earth. They propose two radically different plans to
> counter the threat: a nuclear strike to deflect the comet; and an
> evacuation of the threatened zone.
> 
> The drama begins when an unidentified Near Earth Object (NEO) hurtles
> through Earth's atmosphere and plunges into the sea off the west coast
> of Ireland. Air hostess Marcie photographs the object on her mobile
> phone as her plane prepares to land at Shannon air****t. Her flight
> narrowly misses disaster as a huge tsunami engulfs the air****t and
> vast areas of the West Coast. The gigantic wave leaves hundreds of
> thousands dead, injured and homeless.
> 
> Upon hearing news of the Irish tsunami, two leading scientists rush to
> the scene. Englishman Josh Hayden and American Neil Gant work for the
> NEO department of NASA. Arriving in Galway, they link up with resident
> scientists Brendan Kelly and Ly Tam to try and establish what
> happened.
> 
> As the team witnesses the devastation wrought, Neil is tormented by
> guilt that such a deadly object could have slipped through their
> radar. "Our job is to watch objects in space," he says. "If it's not
> our responsibility, whose is it?" Using evidence from the scene and
> images from Marcie's phone, the team realises that the NEO was a
> comet. It seems that the comet's approach was such that the sun's
> glare hid it from view.
> 
> Heading back to America, Josh concludes that they have witnessed an
> event that occurs once every few thousand years - but Neil is not so
> sanguine. He becomes obsessed with the idea of another comet heading
> to Earth, and spends his time scanning data from astronomers around
> the globe. Before long, he ac***ulates evidence that another comet is
> on a collision course with Earth - due to strike almost a year after
> the Galway disaster. "One year on, Earth could be right back in the
> firing line again," Neil tells a sceptical Josh. It would seem that
> the Irish comet was part of a larger string of objects. "What hit
> Ireland was a fragment," Neil says. "What we're looking at now is the
> rest of the mass."
> 
> Josh refuses to believe Neil's conjectures, forcing Neil to go behind
> his friend's back to leak the story to the press. Panic spreads like
> wildfire and, with the Dow Jones plunging, General Harris (Don
> Warrington, 'New Street Law', 'Rising Damp') of the US military seeks
> advice on how to confront the threat. Josh recommends a plan to
> deflect the comet using controlled nuclear explosions, but Neil
> believes this plan could end in disaster. If the comet is too fragile,
> Neil posits, the explosions could shatter it into a thousand deadly
> pieces that would rain down across the planet. "It would be comparable
> to a nuclear war," he says.
> 
> Neil's advice, however, is radical: "America has to take to take the
> hit," he says. His plan is to evacuate the population of the impact
> zone, moving 100 million people from the East to the West Coast of
> America and away from the predicted impact site around Pennsylvania.
> But the exact location of the comet's strike and the extent of the
> devastation cannot be calculated until the last moment, creating a
> tense race against time to complete the biggest exodus in history.
> 
> Any thoughts about this?
> 
> --
> Matt Browne
> My webpage is at http://www.meet-matt-browne.com
> "As a race, we survive on planet Earth purely by geological consent."
> Bill McGuire

Yeah, real simple: The area to be evacuated can't possibly be. Too much 
area, too many bodies, not enough trans****t to take them away, and not 
enough places to stack them even if there was enough trans****t.

There are going to be a ****load of dead bodies. (On second thought, 
there may be very few *BODIES*, but there are still gonna be a ****load 
of deaths)

The fireball will likely be visible in Colorado, DC, and even Maine. 
Might even se it in Atlanta.

The shockwave will likely level Chicago, and will almost certainly 
destroy Detroit, just to name the two biggies, and would likely erase 
Ohio from the map. Never mind everything else closer. The Virginias 
would take a HUGE hit. I'd expect New York would feel it, even if the 
damage there wasn't huge. The shockwave MAY even cause the New Madrid 
fault to let go, which has a more-than-reasonable chance of unlea****ng a 
flood down the entire Missisippi river valley like has never been seen 
as the Great Lakes head south for the Gulf of Mexico en masse. The 
"fallout" will blanket pretty much everything east, and it wouldn't 
surprise me if most of it came down as molten/flaming chunks out to 500+ 
miles downrange, creating a firestorm that would make the Dresden 
firebombing or the Hiro****ma/Nagasaki nuke hits look like a kid playing 
with a book of matches in a sandbox the size of a football field by 
comparison.

In short, regardless of evacuation attempts, I'd expect casualties in 
the millions, and that most of the northeast corner of the US would 
essentially cease to exist as a habitable piece of land.

-- 
Don Bruder - dakidd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 - If your "From:" address isn't on my
whitelist,
or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text
"PopperAndShadow"
somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without
my
ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd>
for more
info